


Waking Nightmares

by ToriTC198



Series: Middle Ground [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Erik has gone through hell, Erik needs a hug, Gen, Holy hell this is solid angst, TW: Blood, You will find nothing but pain in this fic, tw: death, tw: torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-07 13:50:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1901400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToriTC198/pseuds/ToriTC198
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"As his home disappeared behind him, Erik started to feel the cold pressing in around him. It was far from a warm night and his thin pajamas did little to help the shivers that wracked through him. Harsh stone tore at his bare feet and soon he couldn’t tell if the tears were from grief or from pain."</p><p>Erik's journey as a child to the concentration camps and the years after he was freed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please, for the love of God, take note of the trigger warnings. They are in the tags and they are in the end notes.  
> I was feeling like writing angst and this is what happened. I am so sorry.

Erik shifted in his sleep, curling his hand around the blanket in an unconscious desire for protection. Lately his dreams had been far darker than what a twelve year-old should suffer, but the world offered little choice in the matter. He heard reports nearly every day of his friends being taken away, families being beaten in the streets. It was a dark cloud that hung over him everywhere he went now and it followed him into nightmares every night.

That night though, he wished the nightmares had stayed in his head instead of becoming a soul-shattering reality.

The door bursting open startled him from his fitful rest, but he was still too near his dreams to fully realize the implication of the noise. It wasn't until his mother swept into his room radiating urgency that Erik truly woke up. Her hushed whisper was full of fear as she urged him out of bed begging him to hurry. The bag was packed and sitting next to the wall, it had been ready for weeks in case this happened, and Erik didn't even bother with shoes as he grabbed the suitcase and tore open his window.

He heard shouting down the hall, his father's voice trying to stall the officers from getting to them. The sounds of a slight struggle reached Erik's ears and then, horrifyingly, the retort of a gunshot echoing through their small apartment. Erik froze, one leg over the window sill and the other still in the room as his mother begged him to keep moving.

He couldn't. Erik couldn't get his muscles to respond.

Men in uniforms streamed into the room just as Erik finally regained the ability to move but it was too late. Thick demanding fingers latched on to his arm, dragging him back inside as Edie Lensherr's screams rang through the building.

"He's just a boy! Please! Don't take him too!" Her feet scrabbled for purchase against the hard floors as she was dragged from the room. Erik's captor followed soon after, hands biting dark bruises against the small boys skin as he reached desperately for his mother.

"Mama! Mama!" The plea tore from his lips as tears fell down his cheeks. The flow of words halted as he was pulled into view of the entryway and saw his father. A stream of blood trickled down his forehead to collect in the slowly growing puddle of red. "NEIN! PAPA! NEIN!"

They didn't allow him even a second to grieve his father's death before Erik was being shoved out into the darkened street. His screams tore through the night and he felt betrayal rise in him when no one answered. Friends, neighbors who had once shared meals at their table, were simply ignoring the sound of a family being torn apart. He knew that they heard, he knew they saw through cracked curtains as the soldiers marched through the streets, but they turned away from it and shielded their children from the horror.

There were others in this neighborhood who had been grabbed from their beds and forced into the dim light of the street. Erik found himself shoved into the small cluster of Jews, all crying as the morbid parade stretched on. Erik reached for his mother's hand, curling fingers tightly around hers as he struggled to see through the tears.

As his home disappeared behind him, Erik started to feel the cold pressing in around him. It was far from a warm night and his thin pajamas did little to help the shivers that wracked through him. Harsh stone tore at his bare feet and soon he couldn't tell if the tears were from grief or from pain.

All around him he saw the raw and bloody soles of others who had not had time for shoes and Erik knew his own feet looked the same. His steps faltered, a soft cry of pain issuing from his mouth as his mother viciously shook her head and kept dragging him forward. Erik wanted to protest, wanted to pull away from her and rest for just a moment.

Then a small girl did exactly what he had been considering. She stopped dead in the road, sniffling and rubbing at the tears coating her face. Erik screamed as the spray of blood coated the pavement under the girl and she slumped to the ground. She couldn't have been more than nine.

They walked until his legs burned and they kept walking. His feet had long since lost sensation and Erik suspected he had worn off so much skin that there was nothing left to hurt. His mother walked proud and tall beside him, staying strong for the child at her side while all Erik wanted to do was collapse. All he could think was that this was his fault. If he hadn't frozen in that window sill his mother and him would have been escaping quietly into the night.

Instead, they closed in on the train waiting at the station for the human cargo that it would soon carry off.

The soldiers herded them like cattle onto the train cars, shoving them inside until there was no room to do anything but stand. The dull throb of bleeding feet had long faded into the background of Erik's mind as they marched but standing still brought it all back. Shooting pains flared up and down his legs but there was nowhere to sit and no way to ease the pressure on his throbbing feet. He huddled beside his mother, leaning into her warmth as she wrapped arms around him and murmured into his hair, "Alles ist gut, mein liebe."

It was a lie. They both knew it was a lie, but her shaking hand stroking through his hair was the only tether he had to the way things had been so he pressed into the facade of comfort.

The train started moving, knocking people against each other with each rumbling bump. He didn't know how long they huddled in that cramped hell. No one could lay down or even sit so people fell asleep leaning against their neighbors. The sharp smell of urine and feces soon filled the air as people were forced to relieve themselves where they stood. Warm tears rolled down Erik's cheeks, mirroring the faces all around him.

The metal box kept out none of the cold air and even the mass of people couldn't keep the car warm forever. Body temperatures steadily dropped and Erik forgot what it was like to be able to even feel his fingers. Half way across the car, an elderly woman had stopped breathing entirely and her dead-eyed stare bored into the back of Erik's head. No one could move her, there was nowhere for her to go, her lifeless body just stayed slumped against those nearest her as the train moved ever onward.

Erik didn't know how things could be worse. The ammonia of bodily fluids thickened the air and every breath made him want to gag, his mother listed against his side, long abandoning the futile attempts at comfort. Then with a screech that thrummed through his ears, the train slowed down and finally crawled to a stop.

Doors were pulled open by soldiers with expressionless faces and the men started grabbing and pulling at the passengers in the train. As they went, they shoved people into groups. The young, the old… and the corpses.

The deadened nerves of Erik's feet fired back to life with a vengeance as the soldiers forced him to move. Blood had dried, connecting his feet to the cold floor of the train and moving ripped the scabs off and nearly brought Erik to his knees. His mother's arms caught him, keeping him standing and begging him to keep going.

He was torn from her again moments later and shoved into the group with the young as his mother was pushed into the group with the old. Erik cried out for her but was pushed back by cruel hands. For the first time he noticed the smell of burning flesh drifting across the smoke in the air and he longed to return to the crowded train car. He bit back another sob and turned instead to the heavy iron gates rising above him. The words "Arbeit macht frei" were wrought in metal at the top of the entrance and Erik knew that it too was a lie. Work wouldn't set them free. Nothing would.

The soldiers finished clearing out the trains and swiftly started ordering the groups to move. As the prisoners flowed through the gates Erik tried to get over to his mother but the throng of people between them wouldn't allow it. A second gate loomed ahead of them, a large building with churning smoke stacks rose behind it and Erik somehow knew that going through that second gate was the worst place he could be.

He felt a small measure of relief when the guards surrounding the younger group of Jews started guiding them in a different direction. The relief was short lived as he realized that the group of older people, his mother among them, was still being prodded towards the second gate.

Erik snapped. He shoved at the people beside him, tearing through the crowd as he fought to reach his mother. To stop her from entering that final gate. It was too late, she looked back at him sadly as the metal bars closed between them and Erik screamed for her until his throat ached.

Guards were grabbing on to him now, pulling him back, but Erik pulled just as hard the other direction. Something was answering him. Something stirred deep in his mind that he had never felt before and as he reached for his mother he felt the metal of the gate start to bend towards him, straining to follow his unspoken command to open.

He pulled himself towards the metal, pleading with it to free his mother. Then pain lanced through his head and everything went dark.

* * *

His head gave a sharp stab of pain when he woke up in his cell. Erik took a moment to regain his bearings and then he remembered his mother being dragged away from him with the other people deemed too old to work. He had shouted, screamed as he fought the guards in a mad attempt to reach her but the gates had shut between them regardless. Then he remembered power swirling inside him and the sense of something at the edges of his body that he could reach out to.

Metal had curved towards him as he cried out and then the butt of a gun cracked against his skull and he had woken in this darkened pit. Erik curled in on himself as the sobs shook his body. Everything had fallen apart so quickly and his mind still reeled with the shock of it. Part of him hoped it was still just another nightmare, but even in his darkest dreams it had never been this bad.

Erik's feet still throbbed, raw and open sores covering the soles and oozing blood onto the floor. His legs shook from the overuse his muscles had endured and his cheeks were sore from the tracks of tears that seemed never ending.

Then someone noticed he was awake. A guard came in, gripping his upper arm and hauling him painfully to his feet. Erik found himself marching again, his feet stumbling every few steps as his muscles seized up and refused to cooperate.

The guard spoke to another man standing at the side of a door. Erik overheard something about a man having an interest in him. The two soldiers mentioned getting him processed quickly so he was ready when Schmidt called for him. The second man nodded, stepped aside and allowed them through before following after.

Erik was forced into the small room, dark and dusty with two chairs and a table between them. The soldier who had stolen him from his cell shoved him into the chair while the other man sat across from him and picked up a device sitting on the surface of the table. Before Erik knew what was happening, his arm was pinned down and the second man was jabbing repeatedly into it using a needle tipped with ink.

He cried out in pain but the solid hold on his arm made it impossible to move. Slowly, painstakingly, numbers formed against his skin and Erik watched with wide eyes as the blood dripped from a hundred tiny wounds.

When they shoved him back in his cell later, one of them scrawled his number on the door before turning to leave. Erik considered begging for food, he couldn't recall the last time he had eaten anything, but his voice wouldn't work. Instead he lay there cradling his bleeding arm as he tried to claw away the numbers deep beneath his skin.

* * *

The next day, he was taken to Schmidt. The man smiled at him as if they were friends and Erik allowed himself to believe for a moment that this man would help him. Schmidt offered him chocolate, which sounded like heaven to his stomach that was still aching with hunger. The chocolate came at a price though; he had to move a small metal coin.

It shouldn't be hard. There was so much less to it than moving an entire gate. Still, Erik couldn't make the small piece of metal move no matter how hard he tried. Schmidt sighed sadly and Erik thought he would be allowed to leave and try again another day. Then, the door opened behind him and his mother was half-dragged into the room by two men.

Erik ran to her, heart soaring as he saw her still alive and healthy. He had been so certain that passing beyond those second gates was a death sentence. She wrapped him in a firm hug and Erik leaned into the embrace gladly until the moment that he was pulled away.

It was only then that the situation seeped in.

The mad glint in Schmidt's eyes told the truth of the matter. Erik's mother was here as leverage when the offer of candy hadn't worked. The sound of a drawer sliding open and the sight of a gun confirmed the horror growing in Erik's mind.

He darted his eyes desperately to his mother, begging silently for help. Her reassuring words did little to quell the fear coiling in his stomach. He focused on the coin, begged it to move. He strained with everything he had in him just to move that tiny piece of metal a single centimeter before Schmidt finished counting.

Then time ran out and with a haunting burst of sound, Erik became an orphan.

For a moment he stood stunned, unable to process that his mother's body lay behind him. Then the anger started to take over. He had lost everything. His family, his home, his identity, all stripped away in a matter of days and the fury of that coursed through his veins like fire. Suddenly the metal in the room was singing to him, vivid in its call.

He latched on to it, crushing it with a power he hadn't known he possessed. Screams rang out behind him and he felt the helmets cave in against the heads of the two men who had held his mother while she died. A furious roar tore from Erik and he spun to face the mass of metal in the room beside him, flinging it from wall to wall as he felt the waves of pain and anguish settle over him.

As quickly as it had come, the anger faded into numbness and Erik stood before the glass doors of the other room. He felt hollow as Schmidt came up beside him and pressed the coin into the palm of his hand with a whispered plan for future pain.

* * *

Erik's eyes streamed with tears and his teeth ground against the leather Schmidt had placed between his teeth. It hadn't taken long after the death of his mother for the vicious older man to start searching for new ways to draw out Erik's power. The first week had involved pumping hallucinogenic drugs into his system and trying to illicit a response through the hazy fog that his mind became.

The theme of the second week was slicing into skin and attaching wires to the exposed strings of nerves before flipping a switch and letting the electricity pour through his body.

Neither method so far had gotten anything from him but raw echoing screams which Schmidt punished him for even emitting. He claimed the sound echoing off the walls gave him a headache so he shoved a strip of leather into Erik's mouth and commanded him to bite.

Erik could feel the blade opening the skin on his back with careful and precise movements, but for the life of him he couldn't grasp the metal with his power the way Schmidt wanted him to. So with a broken sob he braced himself again as metal wiring was pressed against the coiled nerves opened freshly to the air. The switch flipped and fire flew through him as the electricity burst along the nerve endings and blinded him with pain. His small body jerked in agony against the straps holding him to the table and he choked back the automatic instinct to scream again. His teeth nearly bit through the leather and his nails dug bloody crescents into the palms of his hands.

Schmidt merely huffed in annoyance as he once again saw he had failed to get a show of power for his efforts. The older man wore the red of Erik's blood like a badge of honor and the image of his blood splattered tormentor would be burned into Erik's retinas for the rest of his life. However long that was. He didn't particularly expect to survive long.

At this point, he didn't want to.

Another pulse of electricity danced through his nervous system and Erik lost his small measure of self-control as he cried out in anguish. It took a moment to realize that Schmidt wasn't punishing him for the mistake. Instead the man was smiling wickedly as he gazed across the room. Erik turned red and tear filled eyes in the direction Schmidt was facing and he saw the small metal scalpel embedded a solid three inches into the wall.

Schmidt chuckled and laid a falsely gentle hand on Erik's shoulder. "Good, Erik" he said. "It's working. I just need to keep doing what I'm doing."

Erik shuddered as another quiet sob racked his body and the warm drip of blood flowed from his wounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Blood, TW: Torture, TW: Death.


	2. This is Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to make this a longer fic. So I'm adding to it, I'll be exploring Erik's past with little snippets of what his life was like between the camps and meeting Charles.  
> This chapter has trigger warnings at the bottom. Please heed.

Erik’s hands cracked and bled with the dry heat of the ovens. He was reasonably sure that he would be crying if the moisture didn’t evaporate from his cheeks the moment it came into existence. He had lost count of the bodies that had passed through his hands. Most far larger than he was, nearly making him buckle under their weight as he pushed them into the furnace.

That was far better though than the bodies that were smaller than his. He remembered with horrified clarity the first time that he had found an infant piled among the dead. The child was still clasped in its mother’s arms as they both awaited the moment when they would be dumped into the flame and released into the atmosphere.

Erik had put them in together. The one last favor he could do for them.

He had thrown up afterwards and Schmidt came to him with consoling words. Reminded him that they were dead because they were weak. They did not deserve to live. Erik had gasped in the ash ridden air, tasted death on his tongue as it clogged the back of his throat, and he had known in his heart that Schmidt was wrong.

The weak one was Erik. Not strong enough to ply the metal Schmidt demanded of him. Not strong enough to save his people even though the power dwelled inside of him. Erik knew he was weak. If he wasn’t weak, why would Schmidt have to work so hard to get him to be capable of using his gift? Strong people did not get punished for failure, because strong people did not fail.

Erik’s lean arms wrapped around the next body in the pile, the stench of gas and sweat still lingering on the corpse in his arms. He dragged it to the fire and pretended just for a moment that the object in his arms had never been a person. He pretended that this was all for show, fake corpses created to break his mind. That was Schmidt’s goal after all. His teacher had to break him before he could build him back up.

It wasn’t fake though. It wasn’t even a stranger. Erik had stood beside this same boy for days as the trains sped them towards the camp. He choked on the bitter air and swallowed down the bile as he pushed the limp form into the heat. Blood smeared across the naked flesh from the cracks in Erik’s hands. He pretended for a brief moment that it was him and not just his blood that had gone into the furnace. That as the body inside turned to smoke and ash, Erik too could cease to exist.

For a moment, he leaned closer to the flames. Letting their heat lick nearer to him. It would be so simple just to climb inside.

He pulled back with a quiet sob.

No. He wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t do it.

The weak didn’t get to escape. The weak were the one’s who had to stay behind and suffer.

* * *

 

Erik’s hands shook as they held the gun, tears pouring down his face as he tried once again to beg his way out of this. “Bitte,” he choked out. At the glare from Schmidt, he rapidly switched to English. His teacher always wanted him to speak in English. “He hasn’t done anything to me, sir. Please don’t make me hurt him.”

"If you don’t, I will," his master replied. "And you know I will be far less merciful."

Yes. Erik knew that very well. His body still ached from the most recent time Schmidt had been forced to punish him. Fresh tears spilled over as Erik looked down at the child in front of him. Not much younger than Erik himself really, but far more innocent. Erik didn’t know where he had come from, didn’t know his name or what crime he had committed to make Schmidt want him dead.

“ _Now_ , Erik,” his teacher commanded coldly.

Trembling, Erik nodded and lifted the weapon to aim at the small child’s head. He swallowed down the lump in his throat and closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the unguarded terror in his victim’s gaze.

“ _Powers,_  Erik. You are not a human, do not stoop to their methods of death.”

With a choked back sob, Erik complied. Releasing the gun and holding it with his gift alone. It wobbled in his mental grasp and Erik had to reluctantly open his eyes again to aim properly. The gun shook even more as Erik’s resolve started to crack and flake away. He didn’t think he could do it. Taking another person’s life was a sin. He had done it on accident a few times, lost control of his powers, but this… This was murder.

"You have until the count of three," Schmidt called out, growing impatient with Erik. "One…"

It was happening all over again. He could recall every detail of the moment. Schmidt’s voice counting to him. A gun poised to take a life. His mother’s life. The demand that he use his power to avert it. But this time… This time averting death wasn’t even an option. All he could do was make it easier for the poor boy.

"Two…"

And he  _could_. It was in his power to do this one small thing. This time he could use his power before Schmidt reached three. This time he would succeed. He wouldn’t fail this child and doom him to a far more painful end.

With a deafening sound, the gun fired and a corpse slumped to the ground in front of Erik. His own legs gave out underneath him as his body shook with fresh sobs. The lifeless eyes stared back at him accusingly and warm arms encircled him as a voice whispered in his ear, “Well done, my son. I am proud of you today.”

* * *

 

At first it had been merely uncomfortable. The building he was kept in made his mind itch for the touch of metal. Schmidt had spent months making sure that there wasn’t a single speck of the substance within a hundred yards of the compound. It was an annoyance to Erik. Nothing more.

Until it  _was_  more. Hours turned into days and Erik’s mind started nearly screaming for something metal to latch on to. He had spent a year honing his powers under Schmidt’s careful tutoring and it had slowly become a far larger part of himself than he realized. Being without it for a few hours was a hassle. Being without it for _days_  was an entirely new kind of torture. As if he was suddenly blind but still spent every waking moment straining his sightless eyes for some sliver of light.

There was none.

When Schmidt finally came to him, after a week alone in the glass room, Erik nearly wept with relief. It would likely be unpleasant, as Schmidt’s lessons always were, but at least he would be able to finally release his power again. He could feel the anticipation curling around him already and he gazed at Schmidt with uncharacteristic pleading.

The man didn’t take him away though. He wasn’t brought to his usual room, full of metal toys that Schmidt could use against him. Erik was kept in the glass room. He watched in horror as they wheeled in a table, so very much like the one he was usually strapped to, but this one was made of plastic. The straps were the usual biting leather, but no metal buckles dangled from their ends.

Schmidt smiled at Erik, his eyes glinting with a cruel joy, and he motioned for a cart to be wheeled in as well. Erik recognized the familiar array of tools, but he choked back a sob as he struggled to find the familiar metal and encountered nothing. Glass. Plastic. Materials that refused to speak to him.

His entire body ached with the need to use his power, a sharp cry emitting from his lips as he wrapped thin arms around his torso. Ribs jutted out against his fingers and Erik could feel the shaking of his body with each hitched breath.

Erik didn’t understand. What was the point in torturing him without any metal around? How could the pain help him improve his control if there was nothing for him to control?

It hit him at last, after all this time under Schmidt’s care, that it had never been about his powers. Not entirely. Looking up at the mad man Erik finally realized that the torture was for Schmidt’s entertainment.

As Schmidt’s men lifted him onto the plastic gurney, Erik screamed. Fighting back for the first time in months. He felt a hatred settle into him that he had tried to ignore. Erik had spent so long trying to convince himself of Schmidt’s lies, pretending that it was all for his own good, and as that lie finally burst he shattered with it. His small body twisted violently in his captor’s hands, power casting out wildly for some purchase and finding nothing but the same agonizing blank he had felt for a week.

He was slammed into the plastic and straps tightened harshly against bare skin as Erik screamed his anger to the world. Schmidt had wanted the anger and Erik gave it to him freely. The only missing element was the pain.

With a grin, Schmidt set to work against Erik’s skin and added agony to the fury. He pushed Erik farther than he ever had before and Erik’s power stretched so wide that he could nearly feel it snap, his mind almost falling apart with the pressure. He called with his gift for hours in that glass room tinted with red, but nothing ever called back to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw: Death, Tw: Torture, Tw: Blood
> 
> Next Chapter, Erik will be freed from Schmidt's grasp and meet up with an old friend named Magda.


End file.
